May 2016

Researchers from the University of Nottingham discovered a new antiferromagnetic material that may be the basis of future spintronics devices. The new material is copper manganese arsenide (CuMnAs), has an advantage of ferromagnetic materials - in which strong magnetic fields can erase the encoded information.

The problem with antiferromagnets is that manipulating the magnetic ordering of antiferromagnets is quite difficult - because the spins of neighboring electrons point in opposite directions which means it is not easy to change them with external magnetic fields.

We are happy to announce a new Metalgrass knowledge hub, RRAM-Info.com, that focuses on RRAM, or Resistive RAM technology. RRAM is a promising next-generation storage-memory candidate, based on memristors - materials that change their resistance.

RRAM-Info will bring you daily news, commentary and updates about RRAM memory technologies. You can subscribe to our weekly RRAM newsletter here - and if you have not done so already, be sure to also subscribe to the free spintronics newsletter!

Researchers from MIT and colleagues from the US, Germany France and India discovered that when you combine a topological insulator (bismuth selenide) with a magnetic material (europium sulfide) you create a material that one can can control its magnetic properties. The new material retains the electronic property of the topological insulator and also the full magnetization capabilities of the magnetic material.

The researchers were surprised by the stability of that effect - in fact the material exhibited those great properties at room temperatures, which means that this hybrid material can be used to create spintronics devices.

Researchers from Japan and Vietnam report an iron-doped ferromagnetic semiconductors at room temperature. They say this is the same time that a ferromagnetic semiconductor is demonstrated, which is seen as a promising spintronic device material.

The researchers say that current theory predicted that a type of semiconductor known as "wide band gap" would be strongly ferromagnetic, and most research focused on that approach. But the researchers chose a narrow-gap semconductor (both indium arsenide and gallium antimonide were chosen) as the host semiconductor, which enabled them to obtain ferromagnetism and conserve it at room temperature by adjusting doping concentrations.

The Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) institute in France published a video showing a lecture on Spin-orbitronics and 2D materials spintronics by Prof Albert Fert.

Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum demonstrated that topological insulators are suitable for Spintronics applications. The researchers showed how the spins of the electrons in topological insulators can be controlled.

The researchers used circularly-polarized laser to investigate samples of antimony-telluride, a topological insulator. Using the rotational direction of the laser, it is possible to initiate and direct spin-polarised current. The researchers also succeeded to change the orientation of the spins.